Literary quiz: an introduction to the “quotations” tab on this blog – you can find hundreds of literary quotes here.
At a recent reading from my Berlin thriller Blood Summit, someone asked when I found time to write.
Where, and when, to write
I wrote a blog on “Where I write” recently. I’ve also written on “When I write“.
Because, it’s a bummer. Finding a time and a place to write is hard: lots of other things you dearly want to do, dear friends, dear family, dear visitors, and maybe also, like me, a full-time job which you want to do brilliantly.
Sometimes things don’t work out.
Writing at the Wolfgangsee in Austria
This week, I have been away from home all day Friday and Saturday and haven’t got around to writing my planned blog.
Separately, another writing thing went wrong. I haven’t found time to tweet out any of my stock of literary quotes, some gathered years ago, at @rleighturner (if you are on twitter, feel free to follow me there).
So I turned two uncompleted ideas into a solution. Why not make a short literary quotation quiz out of some quotes?
A short literary quiz
One of the following is not a literary quote at all. See if you can guess which one. I have separated out the quotes and the sources. No prizes for matching them; but comments welcome!
Here we go:
Literary quiz: 3 quotations
- I’m Trudi and I’m irresponsible
- His little huddled form was the only thing I could see for miles of darkness that was so packed and concentrated with eager desire to be good. I thought, ‘What a strange thing is man… like in the Bible it says, Who knoweth the spirit of man that looketh upward? This poor kid ten years younger than I am is making me look like a fool forgetting all the ideals and joys I knew before, in my recent years of drinking and disappointment, what does he care if he hasn’t got any money: he doesn’t need any money, all he needs is his rucksack and a good pair of shoes and off he goes and enjoys the privileges of a millionaire in surroundings like this. And what gouty millionaire could get up this rock anyhow? It took us all day to climb.’ And I promised myself that I would begin a new life. ‘All over the West, and the mountains in the East, and the desert, I’ll tramp with a rucksack and make it the pure way.’
- His brow was sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought and his air that of a man who, if he had said ‘Hallo, girls’, would have said it like someone in a Russian drama announcing that Grandpapa had hanged himself in the barn.
3 sources
- P G Wodehouse, The Mating Season
- Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
- T-shirt worn by cafe owner in Naxos, Greece
Clue: Jack Kerouac was an inspiration for my US road trip, described in my blog The Americans.
Go on. Try and match ’em up.
Literary quiz: next steps
I hope you’ve enjoyed this literary quiz. For more literary quotations, hit the “quotations” tab at the base of this post, and browse the hundreds of quotes and excerpts you will find in dozens of blog posts. Enjoy!
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